Humans destroy a third of Earth's biological resources in 40 years

Ecologists have been sounding the alert: from 1970 to 2008 the biological resources of our planet have been shrunk by 28%. According to data given by experts, in comparison to 1966, the consumer of human resources and the main world consumer is the USA.

These data are contained in the report Living Planet which twice a year is put together by specialists of the World Wide Nature Foundation. In order to come to this conclusion, specialists from the foundation studied the development of more than 9000 mammals, fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians, Vesti.ru reports.

The report states that if the whole world were to use natural resources to such an extent that the Americans use them at present, then in order to support the eco-balance we would need five planets to sustain the Earth. The USA is only in 5th place on the list of countries which extravagantly uses the world's natural resources for its own population.

The front runners of this index are Qatar, Kuwait, The United Arab Emirates and Denmark. After the USA comes Belgium, Australia, Canada, The Netherlands and Ireland. Russia is in 33rd place on the list.

The amount of rubbish in the Pacific Ocean has increased by 100 times in the last 40 years. The most littered part of the ocean is the section between California and Hawaii. Researchers have noted that the smaller particles present a serious threat to sea life since they can get into their respiratory or digestive systems. Around 10% of fish caught in the areas close to the islands of rubbish have the vestiges of small particles of plastic in their stomachs, ECO portal has reported.